Teaching

Tutorials

Memory Scenario - Playing a game of pairs with Flobi

We have designed a scenario where a human plays a cognitive game with a social robot. Currently, this is the game “pairs”, where players must remember and find pairs of cards from a set of hidden cards. Other games would be possible, of course, but we chose pairs because its outcome (i.e., how many pairs a player found) is also indicative of current cognitive capability.

While it would be much easier technically to play with a human, the robot is, firstly, a neutral instance, and secondly, can also be equipped with visual and auditory analytics software to pick up subtle signs of stress or negative affect, and communicate these back to the player.

In other words, the robot could also be seen as a nice packaging for a set of sensors. Moreover, the robot is always available, as it has no other duties. So far, our focus has been on the game-play (which is surprisingly challenging, due to the need for fast reactions during interaction), with good first results. Our future work will be to add features geared towards long-term motivation, and visual analytics.